Game 1: Warriors 87, Phoenix 85

You rarely learn unswerving facts about an NBA team on its opening night, but you can take this to bank about the 2012-13 Warriors: They won’t win many games in which Stephen Curry and David Lee combine to shoot 4-of-30 from the floor.

Curry went 2-for-14 from the floor Wednesday night, including missing all six of his three-point attempts, and scoring his first point on a technical free-throw attempt with 10:15 remaining in the fourth quarter.

Lee went 2-of-16 from the floor, missing an array of point-blank shots and contested looks from a variety of angles. On one first half play, he got caught in the air and awkwardly tried to ricochet the ball to himself off the backboard, but it just went in the book as a missed shot.

Through all of the duo’s struggles, the Warriors managed to grind out an 87-85 victory at Phoenix on a night in which Golden State’s newly deepened bench did everything it could to overcome the starters’ opening-night shortcomings.

Carl Landry, Jarrett Jack and Brandon Rush joined Curry and Lee in the lineup for most of the final and defining 1:58. After falling behind 84-83 on a Luis Scola turnaround jumper with 1:43 remaining, Landry hit back-to-back shots.

His jumper with 54 seconds remaining put the Warriors ahead 87-84, and Jared Dudley missed a wide-open three-pointer on the Suns’ next possession that would have tied it. Landry finished with 17 points and six rebounds in 24 minutes.

Rush had 14 points on 6-of-9 shooting, and Jack added 10 points, seven assists and three rebounds. They led an all-reserve attack in the second quarter that built a 42-25 lead with 7:56 remaining in the half.

Phoenix slowly trimmed the lead and then took a 63-62 lead off an offensive rebound by Marcin Gortat with 3:15 remaining in the third quarter, when coach Mark Jackson seemingly had tried just about every combination he could think of.

He was playing with Landry at center and Draymond Green at power forward by the time Gortat’s putback gave the Suns their first lead since the 4:14 mark of the first quarter.

Gortat had 10 points and nine rebounds, giving the Warriors consistent fits in the pick-and-roll game with Goran Dragic. The Suns’ new point guard had 17 points, eight assists and six rebounds.

Nothing ever comes easy in the desert for the Warriors. They snapped a 13-game losing streak here in February that dated back to 2005, and they won last season’s series for the first time since 1994-95.

Of course, this version of the Suns is a different group than those Steve Nash-led squads and the ones captained by Charles Barkley before that. This season’s Phoenix squad has nine players who weren’t on the team last season and lopped two years off the roster’s average age by trading Nash and letting Grant Hill leave via free agency during the offseason.

And, of course, this version isn’t the same Warriors’ unit, either. This one is apparently deep enough to win games even when the stars are at their worst.

Briefly: At 20 years, 154 days old, Warriors rookie Harrison Barnes was the team’s youngest opening-day starter since No. 1 overall pick Joe Smith (20 years, 100 days) made his NBA debut on at Houston in 1995. … The Warriors opened the season on the road for the first time in exactly 11 years, when they traveled to Portland and lost 92-87.